


The Apocalyptic Jackpot

by LunarC



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Caught in a Storm, Clumsiness, Friendship, My First Work in This Fandom, Nasonex will make you dizzy, Prison, Rick Grimes serial snuggler, Swearing, batteries live longer than people do, cursing, pre-Governor, slightly OOC, vending machines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3919519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunarC/pseuds/LunarC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick has an ear infection, he uses meds to fix it which give him vertigo. He trips a car alarm by accident due to this and he and Daryl are forced to hide inside a Pizzeria. They strike the Apocalyptic jackpot inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Apocalyptic Jackpot

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all my name is Krii.
> 
> This is my debut fic for this site. I write a lot of TWD fic for myself but have never completed one to my satisfaction to share. I wrote this in the spirit of keeping it lighthearted despite the show content and may have stretched Rick and Daryl's character a little OOC to accommodate that (but hopefully not too much_.
> 
> Comments and kudos massively appreciated, please enjoy.

Side effects to drugs don’t just come in the shape of headaches or stomach pains. You get crabby, delusional and sometimes, in the world that Rick Grimes lives in, you die.  
  
Rick had picked up an ear infection, after taking a dip in a stream (read: a walker tackled him into a stream and he had had to beat it’s head in with a log) and Hershel had suggested using a nasal spray to treat it, as they didn’t have the right antibiotics at the time.  
  
It seemed to help some, he could smell better at least and though his head hurt a bit and he got a little dizzy his ears were clearing up so he stuck to it. He was cleared by Hershel to go back to runs later that week.   
  
So when he and Daryl are on said run, couple of miles out from the prison and Rick gets hit with a wave of vertigo he doesn’t gracefully catch himself on the side of a car. He doesn’t even get a word out properly, just cuts off mid conversation about turkeys and has the world slip out from under his feet.  
  
The great Rick Grimes, leader of the Prison community falls over in the middle of some town so suddenly that Daryl doesn’t even notice until he hears Rick’s pistol clatter beside him.  
  
To Daryl’s credit he doesn’t laugh at Rick’s bemused expression, staring up at the sky like he doesn’t know how he got to be on the ground. Daryl drops to his knees beside Rick, frowning and looking a little concerned.   
  
“Woah, you alright, Rick?”  
  
“…Yeah?” Rick says, it comes out like a question and he sits up, tries to shake the vertigo out of his head but ends up almost going back down on his back. He sidles over a tad and ends up pressed against the car behind him, looking up at Daryl a little pale. “Lost my balance-” He mumbled, a bit embarrassed. “Just gimme a sec…” Daryl just nodded, looking around them for any walkers, the only ones he can see are a ways a way down the street and haven’t noticed them yet.   
  
After a few seconds Rick stands, using the car to prop himself up, Daryl reaches for his arm but he waves it away. The world wobbles and he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have left the Prison while still medicated.  
  
“Rick-you don’t look so good, man.” Daryl said, taking a hold of Rick’s shoulder and looking into his eyes. “We should go back.”  
  
Rick frowns, a bit pissed off that he’d ruined a run. “Yeah-maybe.” He takes a step backward and vertigo strikes again, like a kid with a baseball bat yelling ‘heads’ just before the ball impacts. It’s malicious and no one’s fault simultaneously when Rick stumbles backward and into the car hard enough to start the car alarm.  
  
Rick swears, because god fucking damnit, that’s why.  
  
Walkers turn around, Daryl sets his crossbow and the two of them end up running back to the car as quick as two chickens to feed. Except they get blocked off, of course they do and end up having to hightail it back into town.   
  
They end up holed up in a pizzeria, of all places. Rick almost fell over the counter and into a walkers arms and lord almighty he is never using Nasonex again because this is ridiculous, whoever packaged that shit should have written this down on the side effects area what the hell.  
  
“Fuck I’m sorry.” Rick says, his head is between his knees and he’s trying to stable himself. It’s getting dark out and looks like they’ll be spending the night here. Daryl grunts in response, too good a guy to be mad when he should be.   
  
“S’alright. It’s the meds, not you.”  
  
“I shouldn’t of come out, shoulda let Glenn go.”  
  
“It was Glenn’s day off.” Daryl replies.  
  
“Don’t matter, I shouldn’t a come, put us in danger.”  
  
“Mm, maybe, but here we are.” Daryl said, he was rustling around the shop, looking for something to eat or something to use as a weapon. At this point if Rick found something flat and borderline melee in description he might just bludgeon himself to death with it to save himself from more humiliation and shame.   
  
If Daryl got hurt on this run he’d never forgive himself.  
  
“Stop mopin’” Daryl said, throwing Rick a packet of MnM’s he’d found. “Eat these, might help.”  
  
“Thanks.” Rick said, tearing open the packet, they were stale but comprised mostly of sugar and other preservatives. Hell it wouldn’t surprise Rick if the reason the dead managed to stay so composed once they reanimated was due to some of the shit people had used to eat on the daily.  
  
“Save me a couple, I’m checkin’ out back.” Daryl said. Rick made to rise to follow him.  
  
“I’ll go with you-“  
  
“Naw-nah you jus’… You stay here.” Daryl said, not meeting Rick’s eye, his own way of saying Rick was more dangerous to have around then he was help right now. Rick tried not to be embarrassed and failed, gaze dropping to the floor.  
  
“Yeah, alright.” He said, shovelling MnM’s into his mouth.  
  
“… I mean it, save me some of those.” Daryl replied, trying for levity, before slipping out the back to secure the building, Rick grunted in response, like he’d ever eat them all.   
  
Daryl was back a few minutes later.  
  
“Any trouble?” Rick asked, “I thought I heard a thud.”  
  
“Naw.” Daryl said, sitting down across from him, there was a bit of fresh blood sprayed across the front of his jacket, “Gimme some of those.” He said, changing the subject and reaching for the confectionary. Rick obliged and they both sat, behind the counter, staring at one another grimly across the dirty floor.  
  
“Reckon it’s gonna rain later.” Daryl said. “Clouds looked nasty, we could head out during the night, rain’d mask our foot steps…” If you’re up to that. Daryl left unsaid.   
  
Rick nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”  
  
The plan didn’t come off.  
  
It did rain, that was true, but between the thunder claps as the pair of them stood at either side of the front door of the pizzeria (the others had tables banked up against them, an attempt at fortification from an earlier occupant, now dead, presumably) a horde of walkers had decided to amble their way through town, bumping up against the front windows and doors on their way through. Hundreds of them.  
  
“They’re headin’ North.” Daryl reported, watching them in the stormy low light. Lightening lighting up his features every now and then. “Away from the prison, you mighta just done everyone a favour, settin’ off that car alarm.”  
  
Rick closed his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh, “Mighta done or maybe they just got done with the prison and we ain’t there to help.”   
  
“Naw.” Daryl said, “Horde like that, woulda been right behind us, would still be hittin’ the prison if they got there at all. Kinda lucky we didn’t drive back through ‘em.”  
  
Rick appreciated Daryl trying to make him feel better.  
  
“Though, chances of us gettin’ out of here alive are lookin’ slimmer by the second.”  
  
Alright so he wasn’t trying super hard. Rick frowned.   
  
“They’ll pass by morning. We just gotta stay quiet.” The ex sheriff said.  
  
“Rain riles em.” Daryl said simply, “Don’t reckon it’s too long before-“  
  
The sound of a car alarm going off just out front of the pizzeria stopped Daryl mid sentence. He looked over at Rick, expression blank and Rick swore. The horde turned, hundreds of ‘em and all started toward the car, so many of them that after a couple of seconds it was no longer visible and the alarm was muffled by their bodies and the sound of the rain and thunder.  
  
Every walker for a million miles would be headin’ their way now.   
  
“We could slip out the back,” Rick whispered desperately. “Get out before the whole town of ‘em rolls in.”  
  
“We’d get lost in the storm,” Daryl said, “We ain’t even in the eye of it yet and it’s pickin’ up, getting windier. Might get lucky and it’ll topple some power lines, get some noise happening some place else.”  
  
“So what we just hunker down and wait it out?” Rick asked, “That’s your plan?”  
  
Daryl crossed his arms. They had migrated back behind the counter, the MnM’s were all gone and the car alarm was still blaring, mocking them and reminded them of how they had gotten here in the first place.  
  
“You got a better one, _Grimes_?” Daryl asked, emphasis on the Grimes, coming out all sarcastic in his thick accent. Rick shut up, frowning deeply. It’d been a long time since he’d been on the sassy end of Daryl’s stare and it was a place that made him uncomfortable.   
  
“Alright. We wait it out.” Rick said.   
  
“We’ll hide in the back.” Daryl said. “There’s a vending machine out there. Reckon I can jimmy it open with a little patience.”  
  
“There’s a vending machine?” Rick asked, “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”  
  
The reason Daryl didn’t say so earlier was because attached to the vending machine by an unrelenting, rotting, limb was a put down walker. It’s arm had gotten jammed in the little door trying to pull out a soda and if that wasn’t the most embarrassing death Rick had seen so far he hadn’t paying much attention.  
  
He felt kind of bad for the guy-or girl-it was kind of hard to tell, Daryl had mashed their face up pretty bad.  
  
“That’s about the saddest thing I seen for good long while.” Rick says.  
  
“Mm, help me move ‘em. Can’t sleep with that smell in here.” Daryl replied.  
  
They moved the walker out and Daryl cut their arm out of the machine, tossing it into the other room and using his knife to start jimmying the plastic face off. Rick stopped him mid way, asked him if it would have one of those alarms. Daryl just snorted and gesture to the power socket, off, dead, no battery and no alarm.  
  
“Just makin’ sure,” Rick said. He’d had enough of alarms for one day.  
  
Daryl worked on the machine while Rick moved a set of lockers in front of the door to the hall. There was a small window up high above a desk where they could see the storm rattling away. Wind howling outside and the walkers grumbles just filtering through the glass.  
  
It kind of smelt like dead walkers in here, but that was a smell Rick was pretty used to.   
  
There was a lounge too and Rick pulled the cushions off of it, then did a double take.  
  
Because, no shitting you, it had a fold out.   
  
“Ho-lee shit.” Rick said. Like he had just hit the apocalyptic  jackpot (the apocopot, as it was more formally known). He had been very prepared to give Daryl the couch and sleep on the floor, only fair since it was his fault they were here but this, this was too good.  
  
“What?” Daryl asked, focused on getting that machine open.   
  
Rick just grabbed the fold out, amazed at the foresight of the owner (who must have spent some nights here, if the couch was any indicator) and pulled it out, being as quiet as he could. When it’s steel feet hit the floor, Daryl glanced over his shoulder, brows jumping up.   
  
Because shit, that was very nearly a bed, a double, neither had slept in a double for a long time.  
  
“Shit.” Daryl said.   
  
“Right?” Rick responded.  
  
“Now I jus’ gotta get this damn door off and-“ Daryl paused in his jimmying, leaning in a little closer to the frame and going silent. Rick (who was busy tucking the sheets in on either side of the fold out because yeah, heck yeah) turned to him after a second, worried at his silence.  
  
“You alright?” He asked.  
  
Daryl sat back on his haunches with a sigh.  
  
Rick watched him, then came over and inspected the frame himself.  
  
“… It screws on.”  
  
“It screws on.” Daryl spat.  
  
“… So you just gotta unscrew it.” Rick said, a grin spreading over his face.  
  
“Yeup.”   
  
“… How long you been workin’ on that for?”  
  
“Naw but Rick…” Daryl said, he picked up one of the walker’s fingers from inside the vending door and frowned a little morbidly.   
  
They both shared a silent moment for the guy who hadn’t taken the time to inspect the door thoroughly before he died there, a few screws away from saving himself.  
  
So it came to be, around 6pm in the middle of a brilliant storm that Daryl and Rick were lying on a double fold out bed, in a room that stank of dead walker, sharing doritos and mountain dew in silence (except for their eating sounds, crunching, chewing, swallowing, they’d kind of hit the apocopot again, stale chips never tasted so sweet).  
  
Daryl was licking the cheesy dust off his fingers when Rick cleared his throat, breaking the silence.  
  
“So, heads up. I’m kind of a snuggler. Don’t mean nothin’ by it though.”  
  
Daryl stilled, turning to Rick with a frown. It was dark, but Rick could sense it.  
  
“So what I should be sleepin’ on the floor?”   
  
Rick shook his head, “Naw, just-thought it only fair to give you a warnin’, just push me off if I get too close.”  
  
“… You gonna wake up and hit me if I do?” Daryl asked, it was a valid question. Most survivors nowadays had a knee jerk reaction to being woken with a shove. It had saved their lives countless times.  
  
If you didn’t have that instinct you were probably more likely to be outside enjoying the rain storm and attacking cars.  
  
“… No.” Rick said, after a couple of seconds. Daryl turned to him, deadpan.   
  
“… Why’d you hesitate?”   
  
“… Never hit Lori.” Rick replied. Wiping his hands on the sheet under them.   
  
Daryl went quiet at that, they didn’t talk about Lori, not after what had happened. That was a nerve wrapped in barbed wire in the middle of a mine field. Wasn’t nobody could crawl through that one unhurt.   
  
“… I can sleep on the floor.” Rick offered, making to rise, Daryl stopped him with a negative grunt.  
  
“Naw man, it’s fine, I’ll just slap you or somethin’, no big deal. I ain’t gonna cry if you get handsy.” He said gruffly, covering any awkwardness with a thick layer of denial, it was the Dixon way.   
  
Rick smiled and lay back down while Daryl sidled over more onto his side of the bed, for a while there was silence except for the whistling and raging storm outside and the ambling foot steps of walkers and their broken groans.  
  
“I snore too.” Rick said.  
  
“I know that, man.” Daryl replied grumpily. “Why you think I sleep on the cat walk ‘stead of next to your cell?”  
  
Rick chuckled and the two fell quiet, some of the tension dissipating.  
  
All things considered everything had turned out pretty alright for them, hell, they might even actually get some sleep AND manage to bring supplies back for the group, what with the vending machine cracked and full of un spoiled food (more or less).  
  
Rick was actually feeling pretty alright, trying to keep his thoughts off worrying about the others or thinking of Lori while he slipped into sleep, enjoying the leg room of the fold out mattress. Sure the world had gone to shit, the dead walked, he was saddled with at least three different kinds of trauma and was struggling to raise two children in a godless, heathen world.   
  
But right now, curled up next to his friend, fed and mostly safe?   
  
Pretty alright.   
  
Rick woke the next morning to something squirming in his arms. True to form he had turned into the octopus of the night and captured Daryl in a full body hug that the bowman was just now trying to break himself out of.   
  
Rick gave him a break and pretended to sleep on while loosening his grip. Daryl peeled away from him, looking over his shoulder at him with a frustrated sigh before he got up, weight leaving the mattress giving Rick a good enough reason to stir awake.   
  
“Storm’s gone.” Daryl said as Rick sat up, neither of them mentioning the way they had been tangled together a few moments earlier (it had been nice, Rick thought privately, but he enjoyed touching, Daryl was not big on it and would probably take that admission the wrong way). “Reckon we got about 20 minutes till the sun comes up fully. We should pack this up and move out.”  
  
“Sounds good.” Rick said. “You sleep alright?” He asked, only kind of baiting Daryl.   
  
Daryl didn’t look up from where he was unzipping one of the cushion covers from the lounge, making it into an improvised bag to stuff the vending machine food into.   
  
“Yeah, alright…” He mumbled, Rick pretended not to notice the blush and didn’t pursue it. He pissed in the corner, because the apocalypse is charming like that, everywhere is a potential bathroom at the right moment and then the two of them checked their weapons, ate a bite and then pushed the lockers out of the way of the door.  
  
The town was a mess after the storm, the walkers had gotten scattered and most of the horde seemed to have moved on (or was just out sight, waiting for the right moment to get the drop on them). There were tree branches in the road and smashed in windows. Rick felt lucky they had found the pizzeria which had fared pretty well with only one busted out window out the front.  
  
They dropped into the chemist on the way through, figuring if they were going to be late on their way back to the prison it may as well return with everything they were after.  
  
They got more formula, feminine hygiene shit like tampons and pads (Daryl found them first, Daryl didn’t even have sisters or a wife, how he knew exactly what to look for baffled Rick), pain killers and some anti-septic amongst other things. Rick picked up some comics for Carl and Daryl found a bear, it was a bit mouldy but it’d clean up alright, Judith didn’t whinge much, on account that she couldn’t yet speak and lordy wasn’t that gonna be the day.   
  
_‘Daddy why do dead people come back and try to bite people?’_  
  
_‘Well Judith that is because the world is an awful place, now eat your vegetables and learn to fire this gun.’_  
  
Yikes.  
  
They made it back to the car without much trouble, jumped right in with an air of triumph. It hadn’t even gotten banged up during the storm and the pair looked over at each other, Rick grinned and Daryl started her up.  
  
Except she didn’t start up.  
  
They both frowned and Daryl kept trying it to no avail when it struck Rick to check under the bonnet. It eventually dawned on both of them that sometime during the night the horde must have walked down this street and tripped the car alarm.  
  
The battery was dead.  
  
“Well, shit.” Daryl said. Turning back to the town they had just left, looking as frustrated as Rick felt. “… What you think? We go back in there and look for a fresh one?”  
  
Rick frowned, there were a lot of walkers back there and not a lot of chance that they’d find a battery without tripping another alarm, if there was one.   
  
The pair shared a look, then Daryl just nodded, going into the back of the car and getting out the petrol can and the hose.   
  
You win some, you lose some. Rick thought as they wandered home, carrying a half can of gas, a pillow case full of supplies and a couple of squirrels that hadn’t run fast enough.   
  
“It coulda been worse.” Daryl reasoned later on as they trudged through the woods on their way back to the prison, he glanced at Rick who frowned back, feeling a little frustrated at the situation despite himself. “Could have died with our arms stuck up a vending machine…”  
  
It was wrong to laugh, but they did anyway. 


End file.
